Turkish Awakening

by Alev Scott

  It would take a library of books to cover the problems facing Turkey’s environment and the threats towards communities all over the country, and I certainly cannot cover them in one chapter of this one. From urban over-expansion to massive hydroelectric dams present and future, relocations of whole villages, destruction of archaeological sites and local ecosystems, there is a catalogue of woe written into Turkey’s ‘development’ over the last few decades, and its over-eager push to reconstruct the country materially as well as politically. While attempts to protect an environment under threat on this scale might seem sadly inadequate, they are still important – as Gezi Park showed us. Locals often become accidental environmentalists when the pitifully small greenery on their doorstep is threatened. Others are aware of the bigger picture and fight to protect large areas of land or indigenous species.

  One person in particular deserves mention, an English lady who has almost single-handedly preserved the Mediterranean habitat of an endangered species: her name is June Haimoff, she is ninety years old and she is the guardian angel of the Mediterranean Caretta caretta turtle. I stayed with June in 2011 when she was celebrating being awarded an MBE down in her home in Dalyan, on the south coast. She is known as Kaptan June by the locals, partly because she arrived in magnificent style by boat back in the 1970s, and partly because of the masterful way she has campaigned for the protection of the turtles in the area. In 1988 she successfully lobbied for İztuzu Beach in Dalyan to become a protected site. A beautiful, pine-fringed crescent of uninterrupted golden sand, it is the breeding ground for the Caretta caretta of the surrounding Mediterranean area and in 1987 was set to have a gargantuan package hotel built at one end and a holiday village at the other. June put an end to that with a huge international lobbying effort, set up a rehabilitation centre for injured turtles near the beach and in recent years has thrown herself into a project to attach propeller guards to tourist boats, in an effort to save the unfortunate turtles being cut up as the boats cruise around their feeding grounds.

  June is in the wonderful position of being completely unafraid of Turkish authorities. She lives in a ramshackle house called The Peaceable Kingdom, surrounded by semi-feral cats and dogs, majestically issuing instructions to her aged maid in fluent but atrociously accented Turkish – a confusing mix of colonial and hippy. Delighted to have an English guest, she sang Gilbert and Sullivan songs to me as we chugged around the bay of Dalyan, and told me about her life as an artist in Gstaad before she sailed herself down to Turkey in her ex-husband’s boat.

  I wish there were a thousand Kaptan Junes at work in Turkey, but unfortunately it seems that only little pockets like İztuzu Beach get this kind of attention and care. On a grand scale, construction sites and dams will prevail unless an environmentally conscientious political party gets elected, but no such party exists. On a minor scale, there have been some efforts to sugar the pill of over-construction; AKP municipalities have made some belated attempts to create green spaces in overdeveloped cities, but as I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, these tend to be far from the centre of town, simultaneously showy and insignificant. The government’s cleaner energy efforts are a bit more impressive. A recent initiative has aimed to match any money spent by factory owners on cleaner manufacturing up to the tune of a million lira in grants, an offer that has already been taken up by a particular cotton manufacturer near Ankara to whom I talked last year. The municipality of Trabzon, on the Black Sea, is also introducing incentives for residents to switch from their favoured coal to natural gas in an effort to improve air quality. These are of course changes for the better, but the preservation of habitats and ancient sites is even more urgent than clean air, at this stage.

  The Turkish landscape is not yet completely ruined, and many areas retain a great deal of original beauty, despite the best efforts of so-called developers. Turkey is in the sad position of relying on the admiration of foreigners and the determination of local environmentalists for the preservation of a landscape which serves as a playground for greedy, Lego-wielding toddlers. Gezi Park showed us that extreme measures are needed to stop the march of over-urbanisation in Turkey. It achieved extraordinary celebrity for a transient cause – what is needed is greater awareness for the rest of Turkey’s threatened spaces.

  10

  A Continental Love Affair

  After nearly thirty years, Turkey’s courtship of the European Union is in its death throes. The Gezi protests might well have been the nail in the coffin. Strong condemnation by EU ministers of the Turkish government’s overreaction to the protests created a diplomatic danger zone, into which charged the EU minister, Egemen Bağış, all guns blazing. He released a statement with all the defiance of a Shakespearean rogue biting his thumb at the European powers that be: ‘The eagerness of some members of the European Parliament to make absurd statements merely for media attention is obvious. We respect the freedom to make these kinds of statements. We hope that they regain their reason as soon as possible.’

  This supercilious attitude was not always in evidence. Since first applying to join the European Economic Community in 1987, Turkey has been constantly knocking on the door of Europe and has never been let in, though it has not explicitly been turned away. The relationship between the two brought to mind an over-keen suitor constantly being rejected by a coquettish mademoiselle, as she led him on a never-ending game of kiss chase. One had to admire both her powers of manipulation and his optimism, but it was fundamentally an undignified situation. Now, fed up with rejection and criticism, confident in its rosy economic horizons and scornful of recent Euro crises, the neo-Ottoman Justice and Development Party has started to concentrate its efforts elsewhere.

  In the wake of the Arab Spring, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu described Turkey as ‘the master, the leader and the servant of the Middle East’. This was an interesting insight into the psychology of Turkey’s foreign policy. Like everyone, Turks enjoy feeling respected and needed. Traditionally, they have been ignored and patronised by the EU, so it must be nice to return to a position of Ottoman-esque prestige among countries in the Middle East. The AKP want to show their voters that twenty-first-century Turkey waits for no man or political body. In April 2013 the deputy prime minister, Cemil Çiçek, declared, ‘We no longer want to wait forever’, noting that the EU had lost the attraction it once had.

  This is not to say that Turkey’s efforts to join the EU have been in vain. Its candidate status, the work it has done to meet EU standards of human rights and an all-important trade agreement and Customs Union have ensured a great deal of foreign investment in Turkey, the lynchpin of the economy. On top of that, Turkey gets over €700 million a year from the EU just for being an accession state, and they spend the money on things like training prison staff in an ongoing effort to comply with EU standards related to the justice system. Turks also have recourse to the European Court of Human Rights. There are both direct and indirect benefits to Turkey’s long-lasting courtship of the EU, but in recent years it has run out of steam – for the last two and a half years there has been no progress in talks which have become increasingly lacklustre. The great myth is that Turkey’s membership of the EU is attainable, just round the corner, but everyone knows – on both sides – that this is simply not true.

  The chill between Turkey and the EU is largely mutual – important European states have traditionally been extremely unenthusiastic about allowing Turkey to join. France and Greece refuse to allow certain accession chapters to be negotiated, due in great part to lingering mistrust of a large Muslim state officially joining ‘Europe’, and historical enmity, respectively. Germany is also very ambivalent about Turkey; Angela Merkel is a notable critic and the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, a fellow Christian Democrat, said to supporters at an election rally: ‘We should not accept Turkey as a full member [. . .]Turkey is not part of Europe.’

  Cyprus is a complete stalemate. No one in the world recognises the existence of the Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus apart from Turkey, and until they do, Turkey will not recognise (Greek) Cyprus or open air and sea ports to Cypriot trade. This non-implementation of the EU Mediterranean trade pact has led to the EU council freezing eight chapters in accession talks, but Turkey will not compromise, saying they will always choose Cyprus over the EU: ‘Turkey’s choice will forever be to stand next to the Turkish Cypriots. Everybody should understand this,’ said Deputy Prime Minister Çiçek in 2009 and he reiterated this in 2013. It’s non-negotiable, a dead end to the Turco-European relationship.

  The EU is not in the best financial shape and, unsurprisingly, many Turks are jubilant that the lira is doing comparatively well. When you have been excluded from something for so long, and made to feel inferior, there is a particular elation in a reversal of fortune. I was speaking to an old, wizened fisherman recently, and asked him what he thought about Turkey joining the EU. He was unapologetically scornful of the idea: ‘Why should we want their measly Euro?’ he asked, quite reasonably. ‘The lira is strong! Let them ask to be part of Turkey!’ Turkish officials reacted in a similar spirit to the Cypriot economic crisis of March 2013. When it became clear that a serious, multibillion Euro bailout was needed, Egemen Bağış, the EU minister, magnanimously offered Cyprus the prospect of sharing the Turkish lira used by North Cyprus, on the condition that Cyprus leave the EU. To rub salt into the wound, he added that this crisis would never have happened if Greek Cypriots had accepted the Annan plan of 2004, which would have unified the island, as the Turkish Cypriots had done. Bağış made a valiant effort not to gloat. ‘It’s not proper to kick someone when they’re down. God save them,’ he said, which no doubt comforted his intended audience no end.

  This is, in any case, largely irrelevant to Turkey’s current interests, which have been drawn ever eastward. The Middle East is beginning to open up again and even Israel is eager to be friends. Gas deals are being signed with Azerbaijan and trade agreements with the Ukraine. Japan is a high-profile business partner. The EU, while remaining an important trade partner for Turkey, is no longer a promising political ally.

  At the same time, the middle-class Turkish consumer is embroiled in a European love affair which shows no signs of abating. Turkey’s relationship with Europe is complex and long-standing; since Ottoman rule, there has been a historic fascination with Europe and all its Western sophistication, counterbalancing Turkey’s more natural geographic and religious association with the Middle East. Correspondingly, Europe has long been fascinated by the exoticism of the East. Both orientalists and occidentalists have often unrealistic and misguided pictures of the other.

  It has traditionally been wealthy, secular Turks who want to associate more with the West than the East. One of the most striking public examples of European influence in Turkey is Dolmabahçe Palace on the western bank of the Bosphorus, built in 1856 by the last Ottoman Sultan, Abdülmecid I. Until then, the Sultan’s residence had been the magnificent but decidedly un-European palace of Topkapı, on the southern peninsula of the Golden Horn; in the fading autumn of the Ottoman Empire, Abdülmecid felt that he should show his European neighbours that he could compete with them in pure pomp and extravagance, as dictated by the style of the times. Dolmabahçe was built at a cost of thirty-five tons of gold, a riot of rococo style and pseudo-Baroque architecture, gold leaf-covered ballrooms and Victorian crystal conservatories. The central hall contains the largest Bohemian chandelier in the world, a gift from Queen Victoria, and is reminiscent of the Doge’s palace in Venice, in the same way Versailles is reminiscent of a French chateau. The palace is an exaggeration of European influence, with no coherent style of its own, a striking sign of the Sultan’s desire to prove that Ottoman Turkey was on a par with (the rest of) Europe.

  Unconvincing as that attempt was, there were more considered efforts to emulate the best that Europe had to offer. In the last days of the Ottoman Empire, it was obvious that the Ottoman system of government was outdated, the coffers were empty, the world had moved on and Turkey had become, in the words of Nicholas I of Russia, ‘the sick man of Europe’. No one wanted to be associated with the old ways of doing things, and European influence was welcomed in Istanbul and further afield. Italian architecture graced city streets, French and German engineers designed funicular and railway systems, British bankers controlled a sizeable portion of the financial sector, and schools and hospitals were built by major European powers. In the early 1920s Atatürk embraced the Western ideology of secularism and encouraged modern dress, as I described in earlier chapters. By banning the fez and veil, and promoting suits and fedoras, Atatürk was giving the Turkish people themselves a Western makeover.

  The influence of European powers has always affected Istanbul first and foremost – the most historically significant half of Istanbul is technically in Europe, along with Thrace. The eastern half of Istanbul lies across the Bosphorus in Asia, along with the vast geographical majority of Turkey. The now defunct Orient Express began her journey in London, steamed through Paris and Vienna and ended her European leg in Sirkeci, a train station on the western side of Istanbul. Passengers who wished to continue to Baghdad took a ferry over the Bosphorus to Haydarpaşa train station on the eastern side of the city, a transition which very clearly marked the literal (and littoral) separation between West and East with symbolic ceremony.

  Many people visiting Istanbul for the first time expect there to be some great change when they cross to Asia by ferry or drive across one of the bridges, but there are no turbaned camel traders waiting to greet you on the eastern shore; it looks much the same as the western shore, without the great Ottoman landmarks. It is true that the western side still has a clutch of consulates, foreign schools and churches, but these make up a very small percentage of this side of the city. Crossing from West to East or vice versa is all about the journey itself, the excitement of passing over a historic stretch of water thronged with ferries and tankers from far-flung corners of the earth. Once you reach the other side, you are back to urban normality. The truth is that European influence in Turkey these days is more conceptual than actual; it is not stamped on the landscape but in the minds and aspirations of the middle class. It works behind the scenes – in finance, on television and most of all in what people can buy.

  From a commercial viewpoint, European popularity in Turkey is gloriously profitable. Turks fork out disproportionate prices for European – and American – brands, paying considerably more for suits, face creams or the humblest saucepan than they would pay for the Turkish equivalents. The high prices of these foreign products are only partly justified by import cost; even factoring those in, the prices are grossly inflated, because the market panders to Turks’ expectation that foreign brands are superior. Main roads and malls in big cities are full of restaurants and clothing chains like Zara and Caffè Nero, and there are an increasing number of boutique, Parisian-style bistros and English or Irish ‘pubs’ in the expensive parts of town where foreign-loving Turks live. European influences crop up everywhere; on menus in high-end restaurants, şnitzel (schnitzel) and sufle (soufflé) will feature, even if the majority of the food is Turkish. European culture symbolises refinement and progress, and people who identify themselves with European products and words are considered terribly şık, at least by themselves.

  This is not new, but it is more visible than a couple of decades ago because of the explosion of chains and the exposure to Europe in the form of tourism, in both directions. However, European desirability runs much deeper than commercial enterprises, and is not, of course, unique to Turkey. The charm of European or ‘Continental’ sophistication can be felt in America or the Far East, or indeed Britain, just as it can be felt in Turkey. However, Turkey is in the position of being caught between two worlds, and the pull of Europe is particularly attractive to those Turks who want to associate themselves with the Continental capitals and all the undefined but apparently superior trends and standards contained therein.

  The s
uperior social status that seems inherent in a European-facing perspective is reflected in language. In Ottoman times, French was spoken by the nearest Turkey has to an aristocracy – the ‘White Turks’ – and in administrative circles. French-derived words have formed a considerable part of the Turkish vocabulary, and many are now ordinary, everyday terms: kuaför (coiffeur, hairdresser), şöför (chauffeur), bulvar (boulevard). Some, however, still carry an air of sophistication. Words like nostaljik (nostalgic) and otantik (authentic) have rough Turkish equivalents that do not convey quite the same thing as the French-derived terms. There seems to be hierarchy even among foreign-derived words in Turkish; for example, the Italian-derived lokanta (locanda) means ‘restaurant’ but in reality, establishments calling themselves lokanta are usually more modest affairs than those calling themselves restoran (a transliteration of the French restaurant). Once upon a time, all restaurants were probably foreign-owned, and indeed a relatively foreign concept in Turkey, hence the comparative lack of Turkish equivalent words. The meyhane (literally ‘wine house’ or ‘tavern’) is a truly Turkish concept, but it is less about idle eating out and more about concentrated fun.

  It would be wrong to assume that all this means that Turks are dissatisfied, or would want to trade a Turkish lifestyle for a foreign one. They like to have egzotik options open, but in reality they often prefer their Turkish way of doing things. I am always struck by restaurants which are, in fact, Turkish, but aspire to Continental glamour. To the middle-class Turk, these restaurants represent the zenith of foreign sophistication. The House Café and Kitchenette are prime examples of successful hybrid Euro-Turkish chains; with English names, expensive Shoreditch café-style tiled interiors and deafening elevator music, they offer menus in both Turkish and English and a mix of all kinds of cuisines at much higher prices than your average Turkish restaurant. Wealthy Turkish ladies who have nothing to do but lunch scan a menu full of eggs hollandaise, schnitzels and linguine, but usually order dolma, simit tost, menemen or köfte. They enjoy coming to a place with European pretensions, and seeing these items on offer makes them feel that they are buying into an exotic way of life. When it comes to what they will actually eat, they choose Turkish over foreign dishes most of the time.